1. Technical Field of Invention
This invention relates to a network controller and more particularly to such a processor at an access point with diagnostics for monitoring, analyzing, predicting, and reporting of network performance
2. Background of the Invention
Process control systems are evolving from individual process control devices with specialized, proprietary, or no inter-device communications to communicating devices with standard protocols. These protocol standards for communication are varied and intended for different applications. The protocol standards for process control systems differ from Ethernet standards as different functions are needed in process control than with Ethernet functions. Existing process control system networks are a hodge-podge of home brew and specialized implementations. As process control communications evolve decentralization, flexibility and power of these process control networks will improve. Examples of recent standards for process control system communication include FOUNDATION™ fieldbus H1, FOUNDATION™ fieldbus HSE, Profibus PA®, Profibus DP®, Device-Net®, Hart®, CAN, and Modbus protocols. These protocols  implement communication standards and functions but vary in capabilities and requirements.
Maintenance of a process control network involves many aspects and is evolving. This situation presents challenges to the network administrators as capabilities evolve and control remains elusive. The majority of process control networks control and monitor machines that carry on processes and sensors for accessing performance of these machines in real or near real time. In past network operations a problem would be discovered when a catastrophic problem such as a system crash occurred. Following such a problem a technician would be dispatched to the symptom and begin trouble shooting. With the primitive data available to the technician an experienced guess guided where to look and what analysis devices to bring to the site of the problem. When the production site was remote from the technician site additional time would be lost. These situations (sketchy data and travel to site) exacerbated time to repair the actual problem. Monitoring of these networks requires more then sequencing and finding problems. As anytime a problem occurs the process and typically the machine will have to be shut down causing production stoppage and lost revenue. With today's tight budgets and fill schedules of machines system problems need to be anticipated and solved before they happen.
Devices and capabilities have started to be promulgated for monitoring and identifying nodes (typically machines and sensors) problems. However, these devices are aimed at characterizing problems after they occur. Or exhaustive statistical processes that consume time, processor power, and storage space to arrive at a solution that usually can often be resolved with simple conditional data awareness. While the data these devices generate are useful they will only reduce the down time of catastrophic failures, not prevent their occurrence.
What is missing from the offerings of present process control system network monitors is a device that will provide flexibility in process control network communications  standards, facilitate flexibility in network monitoring (including Ethernet interface), and perform network performance statistics analysis in real or near time.